Auroni wrote:Of course, in lieu of available conversion statistics for all of these questions

Is there any reason why we don't have conversion statistics? Not enough manpower? Not worth it for a tournament that is only held once a year? Too small a sample size to be meaningful for just this one tournament?

Auroni wrote:Of course, in lieu of available conversion statistics for all of these questions

Is there any reason why we don't have conversion statistics? Not enough manpower? Not worth it for a tournament that is only held once a year? Too small a sample size to be meaningful for just this one tournament?

I would be willing to do conversion stats if there was either a little money in it for me, or if it was split up among enough people that the burden wasn't too much.

A different type of discussion, but what did the readers at this year's NSC think of the formatting and style of answer line in the set? The choice of font for the set appears to be similar, if not the same, as the font used for the past two ACF Nationals, and I thought it was rather easier on the eyes when reading it in my own time.

Additionally, I thought the methodology by which answer lines were formatted was especially helpful: the most common, likely-to-be-given answer was placed first, even if it was not the full answer line, and the expanded answer line, plus all alternatives, were given in square brackets. For example:

I really think more question sets should imitate this type of answer line formatting because it helps moderators, especially newer ones, quickly process answers by putting the most frequent one to appear first.

Yes, I definitely enjoyed this set. This was my first Nationals tournament and I felt it was an excellent experience. Although I am fairly unhappy with our team placement, it was a huge step forward for me and my team going into next season. There were some questions that I didn't agree with it and they have already been mentioned in previous posts. These include the Theravada Buddhism as well as the funerals tossup, but other than that, I felt this set was well written and well executed. My team isn't particularly strong in science tossups, so the repetition of velocity and sulfur wasn't too big of a deal, but I was definitely one of those people who ruled out velocity, even when I heard "peculiar" twice, as it had already been tossed up in a previous round. I understand that the topic under which both these answer lines were placed were different, and therefore this has been a learning experience for me. Although I consider myself a generalist, my strong subject is lit and I was very satisfied with the lit tossups throughout the tournament. However, there was one lit tossup on Mrs. Dalloway that I answered, but lost the power due to a protest from the other team. They thought that I had said Ms. Dalloway, and immediately the moderator ruled me incorrect and read a replacement tossup to the other team, which they got. Aside from this, though, the set was very good and definitely one of my favorite sets I have played. I'm looking forward to playing in my first NASAT in a few days. This should also be a great experience for me.
But I want to thank Auroni Gupta and all question writers, editors, staffers, and everyone who helped make this tournament possible. We couldn't do it without you guys!!

Spheal With It wrote:A different type of discussion, but what did the readers at this year's NSC think of the formatting and style of answer line in the set? The choice of font for the set appears to be similar, if not the same, as the font used for the past two ACF Nationals, and I thought it was rather easier on the eyes when reading it in my own time.

Auroni wrote:Of course, in lieu of available conversion statistics for all of these questions

Is there any reason why we don't have conversion statistics? Not enough manpower? Not worth it for a tournament that is only held once a year? Too small a sample size to be meaningful for just this one tournament?

I would be willing to do conversion stats if there was either a little money in it for me, or if it was split up among enough people that the burden wasn't too much.

Spheal With It wrote:A different type of discussion, but what did the readers at this year's NSC think of the formatting and style of answer line in the set? The choice of font for the set appears to be similar, if not the same, as the font used for the past two ACF Nationals, and I thought it was rather easier on the eyes when reading it in my own time.

I believe it was Garamond.

Confirm. I'm actually not completely thrilled with how it turned out, as italics in particular didn't look very good. I'm open to suggestions for better font choices in the future.

I would just like to mention that in Round 5, questions 8 and 15 both could have been answered with "glass." Though the former was a science tossup and the latter referred to the family created by J.D. Salinger, it was the first time I had heard the same phrase appropriately answer more than one tossup at the same tournament, much less in the same question packet. What's more, in the next round, tossup 19 was about composer Phillip Glass.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the inclusion of several similarly named topics (and all three being very well written questions), but the close proximity of the answers did seem a bit odd. I did not notice it myself until one of my teammates mentioned the strange recurrence.

Spheal With It wrote:A different type of discussion, but what did the readers at this year's NSC think of the formatting and style of answer line in the set? The choice of font for the set appears to be similar, if not the same, as the font used for the past two ACF Nationals, and I thought it was rather easier on the eyes when reading it in my own time.

I believe it was Garamond.

Confirm. I'm actually not completely thrilled with how it turned out, as italics in particular didn't look very good. I'm open to suggestions for better font choices in the future.

I love Garamond, but Palatino does better with italics (rip Hermann Zapf)--or Aldus, if you have it.

wordsinblood wrote:I'd be interested to see the subdistribution within Religion, if such a thing exists.

Splitting hairs here, but looking back at the first line of the "Jummah/Friday" tossup -- "Anyone who recites a chapter telling the story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus on this day will be blessed until the next iteration of this day" -- I was kind of confused/annoyed as to why this tossup (that is otherwise only on Islam) decided to refer to the "seven sleepers of Ephesus" (a Judeochristian thing) rather than the "People/Companions of the Cave" (as they are called in Qur'an). Like I know that Surah al-Kahf is recited on Fridays and I know that al-Kahf contains the story about the dudes who slept for a long time in a cave; but the location is not a thing in Islam and the fact that there are seven people is notably false/ambiguous in Islam (verse 22 of the surah in question). I might just be salty because I didn't get this question, but it seems kind of unnecessary to make this question like 'impure religious' especially given the nature and specificity of other religion questions in the set. (Also this particular clue is rendered useless, because a Muslim (probably) won't recognize it and a Jew/Christian who does (probably) won't place it in the context of Islamic Friday rituals.)

Anyway, I'll probably never be 100% satisfied with the quality of quizbowl Islam but overall I was really happy with the amount of it (and other non-Judeochristian religion) in the set/how well written most of it was, so thank you to Auroni (for the Islam) and all of the other religion writers!

The tossup on Friday was one of my proudest, most creative ideas! I'm saddened to hear that I messed it up (by thinking that in Islam there were seven sleepers as well) I didn't go with "People of the Cave" because of some silly reason probably having to do with me thinking that narrowed it down to Islam pretty early, so I apologize for that. As requested, here's the religion breakdown:

Goals were to have a lot of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Indian religions, and for each religion to test a good mix of both scripture and beliefs, which I think was something I succeeded at.

I didn't actually get to play this set, but I just wanted to chime in and say the Christianity answerlines look absolutely amazing. Most of them are very important to actual Christianity but don't come up at regular tournaments I've attended. Last year when I attended PACE I really loved the Christianity because the tossups were hard to fraud but very easily powered for people who actually study the important core beliefs, and I'm glad to see that this year's was similar(at least from the answerlines, I can't be sure since I didn't play it). Also, I really like that there wasn't an over-focus on really minor religions like I've seen at some tournaments. I really wish the more tournaments could handle religion just like PACE.

Daniel Yan-2014 JV History Bee Champion
Captain of 2014 History Bowl JV Runner Up Farragut
"Sinner in the hands of an angry God"

Spheal With It wrote:A different type of discussion, but what did the readers at this year's NSC think of the formatting and style of answer line in the set? The choice of font for the set appears to be similar, if not the same, as the font used for the past two ACF Nationals, and I thought it was rather easier on the eyes when reading it in my own time.

I believe it was Garamond.

Confirm. I'm actually not completely thrilled with how it turned out, as italics in particular didn't look very good. I'm open to suggestions for better font choices in the future.

ACF Nats has used Georgia the past two years and I think it's great. I'm glad we are starting to move away from the tyranny of TNR.

Resurgam wrote:I would just like to mention that in Round 5, questions 8 and 15 both could have been answered with "glass." Though the former was a science tossup and the latter referred to the family created by J.D. Salinger, it was the first time I had heard the same phrase appropriately answer more than one tossup at the same tournament, much less in the same question packet. What's more, in the next round, tossup 19 was about composer Phillip Glass.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the inclusion of several similarly named topics (and all three being very well written questions), but the close proximity of the answers did seem a bit odd. I did not notice it myself until one of my teammates mentioned the strange recurrence.

Without intending to sound dismissive, I can tell you that fixing stuff like this is extremely low priority as an editing task - there's so much other work to do that fixing what's essentially an amusing coincidence at worst gets shuffled to the "last if at all" pile.

vcpavao wrote:The "Ewig" clue for Gustav Mahler seems to be a bit of a stock clue, I must say (I saw it in either NASAT 2013 or 2014 and possibly one other set). Did not compete at PACE, just my two cents.

I know this might be a little late, but regarding the lead-in to the tossup on Robert the Bruce (#12, Round 12):

A popular legend recounts how this man drew inspiration from seeing a spider spin a web while he hid
in a cave...

In the Quran, Muhammad hid in the cave of Thawr from people who wanted to kill him, and a spider spun a web across the entrance. When his enemies arrived, they didn't search the cave because they thought it impossible for anyone to enter without disturbing the giant web at the entrance. While I realize it might have been controversial to call it a "popular legend", my Sunday-school conditioning took over, and I first line negged with Muhammad.